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(UPDATED) Second verse . . .
. . . same as the first.* Nothing against Don Share, of course. But “[a]fter an extensive national search” … really? Still, what could we expect from an organization whose “incoming president” could—with a straight face, I’m sure—remark, “Don Share represents significant change as well as continuity.” Just as Poetry Magazine represents good poetry as well as bad, I suppose. Still, maybe along about January I’ll re-up to see if Mr. Share’s editing “bears the handprint of necessity” (to steal the luminous phrase that Laurence Lieberman, I believe, once used in a review to describe W. S.Read More
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Shafts of Sunlight
Don Share posted this on Squandermania but didn’t provide a link to the source. It’s from an extraordinary essay called “Shafts of Sunlight,” which Jeanette Winterson published in The Guardian: [W]hen people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy.Read More
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Friday Notebook 09.02.11
Leonardo Sciascia, in the final novella collected in Open Doors, “1912 + 1,” explains a point of timing in the testimony of the case he is describing: When he [the witness] says “one night at about two,” he would, in those days [1913], have been understood by everyone to mean two hours after Avemaria and not, as now, two hours after midnight. Then—and indeed until well beyond my childhood—the day was not divided civically, as it were, by clock-tower chimes but ecclesiastically, by the ringing of church bells: Salveregina, Noon, Vespers, Avemaria, and the Second Hour of the night.Read More
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Kvetchy
Don Share’s a bright guy and a fine poet. And I have a lingering cold that’s made me kvetchy—tired and irritable; not too tired to kvetch, but too tired to go on at length.Read More
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But Are There Seven Types of Clarity? Huh? So There….
“Any fool can be ambiguous.” —Linh Dinh, in the comment stream attached to this post by Don Share.Read More
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A Toast
Bill Knott’s Poems for Death has made Don Share’s list of … well, I’m not sure what it’s a list of! Important books Share’s read so far this year? (A shot in the dark.) Anyway, he observes that “Bill is one of the best poets in the country.Read More
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Of (Over- and Under-) Privilege
I highly recommend Don Share’s post entitled “Of Poetry and Privilege” that just arrived on Harriet. I’m not sure it addresses the issue its title raises, exactly—but there’s a lot to chew on.Read More
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The Openness of A. R. Ammons
Thanks to the link provided in Don Share’s post on Harriet, which discusses A. R. Ammons as “the great prosodic centrist of American poetry” (and no, Share isn’t using “centrist” in its usual sense), I found myself reading Stephen Burt’s incisive essay on Ammons, entitled “Naive Melody.” I would have preferred “native” to “naive” in describing Ammons, who in my estimation ranks among the greatest mid-20th century American poets. Of course, Burt uses the word in a special sense that does help define what sets Ammons apart.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
